Kate Middleton remained disarmingly poker-faced about the sartorial challenges facing a Royal bride - and on becoming a global style icon, a role which inevitably comes with the job. Her wardrobe choices have always appeared effortless, and a stylist will not be part of the Duchess's entourage on her first foreign tour to Canada and the US next month.
Kate Middleton wedding dress: top designers give their verdicts: Prince Albert of Monaco's fiancée, Charlene Wittstock has, however, been more open about the pressure of going from commoner (she is a former Olympic swimmer, born in South Africa) to Royal consort. She will marry Monaco's notoriously commitment-shy Prince on July 1 in a dress designed by Giorgio Armani. Karl Largerfeld has also taken her under his wing. Who could provide better advice about the rigours of Gallic style?
"She loves clean-cut clothes with a touch of menswear, which looks very feminine on her," Lagerfeld tells US Vogue as part of an interview Wittstock gave the magazine. She was in New York for her hen party, celebrating alongside Danish designer Isabell Kristensen (one of her two maids of honour), Karolina Kurkova and other friends.
Royal wedding fashion: the best dressed guests: Wittstock tells the magazine, "Karl took me to his workshop in Paris. He said, 'You are going to be a style icon. You bring a breath of fresh air and modern glamour to Monaco.' Then he asked me if there was one item of clothing that I had always wanted to experiment with, and I replied, 'A smoking jacket.' He went back to his apartment and presented me with his own white shirt and smoking jacket from his closet… He trusts my sense of style, and as a result my confidence has grown."She describes being terrified, during the early days of her relationship with Prince Albert, of becoming a laughing stock in palace circles by showing up to meet a head of state in an "over-the-top outfit".
Royal wedding fashion: dressing Sophie Windsor for the big day: The couple met in 2000, but didn't become an item until 2005. Wittstock remembers the 2007 Monaco Red Cross Ball as a fashion "trial by fire" and feeling entirely out of place as a result. She had been playing volleyball all day and threw on a green dress in a rush. Her first few forays into Monaco high society were not her finest fashion moments, she admits. Somehow, we can't imagine the new Duchess of Cambridge ever admitting to such beginner's nerves.